date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:08:47 +0100
from: "Parker, David" <david.parker@metoffice.gov.uk>
subject: RE: [Fwd: Chinese urban heat island effects]
to: "Phil Jones" <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>

   Phil


   Thanks - I've saved this into a safe place!


   David


   David Parker, Climate Research scientist
   Met Office Hadley Centre  FitzRoy Road  Exeter  Devon  EX1 3PB  United Kingdom
   Tel: +44 (0)1392 886649  Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681
   Email: david.parker@metoffice.gov.uk
   Website: www.metoffice.gov.uk

   See our guide to climate change at [1]http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/
   ___________________________________________________________________________________________

   From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@uea.ac.uk]
   Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 2:50 PM
   To: Parker, David
   Subject: RE: [Fwd: Chinese urban heat island effects]


    David,
        surfacestations.org seem to have picked this up a few weeks ago, when
    they made me the Director of the Hadley Centre - a job that I know doesn't exist!
       I was asked by someone at DECC on Friday to write a few sentences to
    help them respond to the following question, which came to Ed Milliband.
    You'd better not pass this on to anyone, but this is what I sent back.
    I don't know, if any of what I said below, was used. The reply had to sent today
    by noon, but I didn't hear back from anyone at DECC this morning.
    I got the impression that there were other questions/issues that DECC didn't
    send me.
    Cheers
    Phil
    What the questioner asked:

   Surface records exaggerate warming, due to urban encroachment on recording stations.
   Satellite records (available only since 1979) agree with stations distant from towns that
   temperatures have been growing much slower than is alleged by alarmists. Indeed,
   temperatures in the USA (the only reliable data series of any large land mass) were as high
   in the 30s as in the 90s. Even Hansen accepts this. The IPCC `correction' for this `heat
   island' is inadequate being largely based on unreliable Chinese records. The Director of
   the Met Office's Hadley Centre finally admitted this last autumn.

    My reply

   Every sentence in the above is wrong!

   There is more than one satellite record of MSU temperatures since 1979. They are almost
   certainly referring to the University of Alabama at Hunstville (UAH) dataset. There is also
   a dataset developed at Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, also in the USA) that shows more
   warming than UAH since 1979. Differences relate to the way numerous issues with the sensors
   and the satellite orbits have been adjusted for. The MSU instruments on these
   polar-orbiting satellites also measure temperature in the lower troposphere (centred about
   700hPa) so are not directly comparable with what is measured at the surface.

   The best discussion of all this is in Ch 3 of 2007 IPCC AR4 (Section 3.4.1.2 and also
   Figure 3.17).

   The USA is not the only region to have good reliable series. It is the most studied record,
   only because the data are more freely available than elsewhere and there are a lot of
   scientists there. There are excellent records also across Europe, Canada, Australia, New
   Zealand, Japan and Russia, and they are considerably longer in Europe than the USA.
   Although coverage could be better in other regions of the world, all records from across
   world have been assessed for long-term homogeneity (including the effects of urbanization).

   The reference to Jim Hansen indicates that they place great emphasis on the records
   produced by GISS. There is another US dataset (developed by NCDC in Asheville), which I
   think is better and this has the contiguous US (lower 48 states) warmer in the 1990s
   compared to the 1930s. The CRUTEM3 data (the land component of HadCRUT3) agree better with
   the NCDC data than it does with GISS. A figure from AR4 to illustrate this is Fig 9.12 from
   Ch 9. This shows observed decadal mean temperatures since 1900 for three parts of North
   America (west, central and east) and all show that the 1990s was the warmest decade of the
   20th century.

   IPCC doesn't have a correction, just like it doesn't have a data set or a climate model.
   IPCC assesses the scientific literature, it doesn't do research.

   The penultimate sentence refers to a recent paper (Jones et al., 2008). This looks at
   urbanization issues across China. This paper shows that urban-related warming is about 0.1
   deg C/decade (for the period 1951-2004). Accounting for this, the remaining warming is 0.81
   deg C over the period from 1951-2004. Combining these two bits of information means that
   60% of the warming is not due to urban effects. This result is just for China, and cannot
   be applied elsewhere in the world. The paper shows, for example, that there is no
   urban-related warming at sites in the centres of London and Vienna. The contrast between
   the effects in China and those in London and Vienna highlight the fact that urban-related
   warming cannot be assumed to be occurring just based on a city's population. It is
   imperative to look at the data and compare urban with rural sites.

   AR4 of IPCC referred to several studies which looked at the effect of urbanization during
   the last 50-70 years. These studies include Parker (2004, 2006) and Peterson and Owen
   (2005), the latter showing hardly any urban-related warming across the contiguous United
   States (see this in Fig 3.3 of AR4). The Jones et al. (2008) study does not conflict with
   the earlier Jones et al. (1990) study, but instead confirms its findings, which were based
   on the 1954-1983 period. Figures 6 and 7 clearly show that much of the temperature rise
   across China has occurred since the mid-1980s, the period after the 1990 study.

   Finally, the paper gives the affiliation of the first two authors, namely the Climatic
   Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The first author is not the Director of the
   Hadley Centre at the Met Office. In fact, no such position actually exists.



   References

   Jones, P.D., Lister, D.H. and Li, Q., 2008: Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature
   records, with an emphasis on China. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D16122,
   doi:10.1029/2008/JD009916.

   Jones, P.D., P.Ya. Groisman, M. Coughlan, N. Plummer, W.-C. Wang and T.R. Karl, 1990:
   Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land.
   Nature 347, 169-172.

   Parker, D.E., 2004: Large-scale warming is not urban. Nature, 432, 290-290.

   Parker, D.E., 2006: A demonstration that large-scale warming is not urban. J. Climate, 19,
   2882-2895.

   Peterson, T.C. and T.W. Owen, 2005: Urban heat island assessment: Metadata are important.
   J. Climate, 18, 2637-2646.




   At 14:17 30/03/2009, you wrote:

   Barry
   No, we have not changed our estimates. We already knew that China was undergoing
   urbanisation, more so than other parts of the world. 0.1C per decade urban warming since
   1951 over China would still translate to a very small influence on the global trend. Jones
   et al also noted that some Western cities are no longer undergoing urban warming so they
   are contributing zero urban-warming trend in recent decades. Many other parts of the world
   have rural stations, and 70% of the Earth's surface is unaffected by cities because it is
   ocean.
   David
   David Parker, Climate Research scientist
   Met Office Hadley Centre  FitzRoy Road  Exeter  Devon  EX1 3PB  United Kingdom
   Tel: +44 (0)1392 886649  Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681
   Email: david.parker@metoffice.gov.uk
   Website: [2]www.metoffice.gov.uk
   See our guide to climate change at [3]http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/
   -----Original Message-----
   From: Gromett, Barry On Behalf Of Press Office
   Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 1:35 PM
   To: Parker, David
   Subject: FW: [Fwd: Chinese urban heat island effects]
   David
   Do you have any comment on this?
   Thanks very much
   Barry
   -----Original Message-----
   From: David Appell [[4] mailto:appell@nasw.org]
   Sent: 29 March 2009 02:25
   To: Press Office
   Subject: [Fwd: Chinese urban heat island effects]
   -------- Original Message --------
   Subject: Chinese urban heat island effects
   Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:59:57 -0700
   From: David Appell <appell@nasw.org>
   Reply-To: appell@nasw.org
   To: pressoffice@metoffice.gov.uk
   Hello. Did the revision of Chinese Urban Heat Island effects in the 2008
   paper by PD Jones et al
   (Jones, P. D., D. H. Lister, and Q. Li (2008), Urbanization effects in
   large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China, J. Geophys.
   Res., 113, D16122, doi:10.1029/2008JD009916)
   have any effect on overall global temperatures in any of your
   temperature time series (especially HadCRUT3)?
   Thank you,
   David
   --
   David Appell, freelance science journalist
   e: appell@nasw.org
   p: 503-975-5614
   w: [5]http://www.nasw.org/users/appell
   m: St. Helens, OR
   --
   David Appell, freelance science journalist
   e: appell@nasw.org
   p: 503-975-5614
   w: [6]http://www.nasw.org/users/appell
   m: St. Helens, OR

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
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